


The Song of Blood

by CaesarVulpes



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: A real feral monsterjon in this one lads, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Power Swap, Cannibalism, Canon Asexual Character, D/s overtones, Enemies to Friends, F/M, Friends to family, Hunt!Jon, Julia and Trevor take Jon as a replacement for Gerry, Kidnapping, M/M, Multi, Pack Dynamics, Season 4 AU, Trans Male Character, gratuitous use of classic rock, no cannibalism yet but it's...it's coming, there will almost certainly be sex but not between Julia and Trevor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-01-29 15:24:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21412402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaesarVulpes/pseuds/CaesarVulpes
Summary: Julia and Trevor come to the Institute fully intending to kill the Archivist and reclaim Gerard Keay. When they find out he's gone for good, they make another choice. After all, an Archivist is basically a monster manual anyway.Meanwhile, Martin finds himself tortured by text messages.
Relationships: Jonathan Sims & Trevor Herbert & Julia Montauk, Jonathan Sims/Julia Montauk/Trevor Herbert, Julia Montauk & Trevor Herbert, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims, background Lonelyeyes
Comments: 25
Kudos: 220





	1. Behind Blue Eyes I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When my fist clenches, crack it open  
Before I use it and lose my cool

"Gotta say I'm disappointed," Trevor says, _growls._ "Genuinely thought you were different. But you're just another _monster._"

Piercing eyes flick over him with disdain. It hurts. Jon had rather liked the Hunters, before he'd spoken to Gerry. But it's Trevor's own fault for having faith in him.

"Not even worth the chase."

And Jon supposes that's fair. He's in even worse shape than last time he saw these two, while they've grown stronger, bolder, more assured. Trevor doesn't even use his tramp camouflage anymore. Julia's influence. Too unhealthy, too dangerous. She doesn't want to lose another father. Now they just look like a normal couple of shabby laborers, never worth a second glance and too frightening to bother.

One of them slaps him. He can't tell who, through his watering eyes.

"You listening to me, lad?"

"Here we are, giving you a second chance you _don't_ deserve."

"Rude, is what that is. Inconsiderate."

He blinks through the sting.

"Sorry, what?"

Julia smiles like knives, like a mountain lion at the back of a deer.

"Said we're giving you a chance. Make things right again."

"We're in need of a new informant."

"And way we see it, you've a debt to work off."

Something draws his mind before the movement draws his eye.

_"Get away from him."_

He meets Daisy's eyes. Luminous in the dark of the hall.

"What's this?" Trevor says, eyes alight with cruel mischief. "Got yourself a watchdog?"

"More like a lapdog," Julia drawls. "Scrawny, isn't she?"

Daisy snarls. "I said get _back."_

"Malnourished, I'd say. When's the last time you tasted blood?"

"Stop it," Jon snaps. Daisy's eyes don't_ look_ like that. Shouldn't look like that, not anymore. He thinks, right now, that he'd do anything to never see them again.

"Sorry, Daisy. False alarm."

"Jon."

"_Please,_ Daisy." 

_Don't listen to the blood. _

He stands, slowly, with his hands in plain view. Rounds the desk equally slowly, as much as his heart races to be so close to two very cross Hunters. "I've, er. Got some debts. I'll be gone for awhile."

"Jon, no. You don't have to--don't go. We need you here."

He shakes his head. "This is best for everyone."

"Your little bookworm's got the right idea," Julia says.

He won't be able to escape them, he knows. But maybe if he tries, they'll hurt him enough to leave for dead. Death doesn't seem to stick, these days.

He can't let Daisy fight them.

\---

“You stick out like a sore bloody thumb. Almost as bad as Trevor, honestly.”

Jon plucks at his shabby jumper and Trevor just smiles and rolls his eyes as though he’s heard it a million times. Jon actually Knows it’s been two hundred and sixteen over the last eight years.

He supposes she has a point. His unkempt ratty librarian look stands out. Trevor is barely passable, but he’s now far past relying on the invisibility of the destitute. Julia’s influence, and he fought every step. Jon thinks he understands. He also Knows that after decades of rough sleeping, there are some things Trevor’s body simply rejects. New clothes feel strange and wrong on his skin, the smell of factory is overwhelming. Charity shops like this suit him much better.

”It’s hardly my fault _someone_ didn’t let me so much as grab a change of clothes.”

”Would you rather we saved ourselves the trouble and gutted you now?”

He silently lets them guide him, ends up with a few pairs of old jeans, dark tees, flannels, a couple of jackets. Jon's fairly sure they only take the big puffy one with the fur-trimmed hood because Trevor laughs so hard seeing him in it. It bloody _swallows _him and the fur still smells like weed. Everything swallows him, really, but neither of them suggest the womens' racks and he's so deeply grateful that he forgets to be frightened of them.

He finds, over the next few days, as they prepare for the trip back to America, that it’s surprisingly easy to steal. People don’t want to look at Jon, these days. Even the racist old bat behind the register at their first American petrol station doesn’t say anything about their obviously bulging pockets after just one look into Jon’s eyes. This, at least, he doesn't feel bad about. He Knows her thoughts so intensely that it's like he can _hear_ her grumbling rude speculations about the origins of his brown skin and hooked nose, about Julia's sexuality and Trevor's...mostly his hygiene, actually. It's irritating, and exhausting, and worrying him that his powers might be progressing even further.

Then he feels it, while the other two squabble fondly over lipstick (Julia's apparently taking too long to choose a color, trying to branch out from her usual dark plum, and Trevor doesn't want to admit he has opinions on what looks good).

The gangly teen has just walked in for an armful of energy drinks and the Vast sits heavy in their mind like a gargoyle. 

"Julia," Jon says, urgently. She fixes him with a glare he'd usually cower from.

"What?"

His mouth is dry and he has to keep looking at her and only her. He's so hungry. God, he's so _hungry. _

"Spit it out, boy."

It's taking everything he has not to pin the teen down with his eyes and pounce and rip the words from their throat, to gorge himself after so long.

"The person who just came in," he manages, through clenched teeth and racing pulse. "They--they've got a statement. I can't--we have to leave. We have to go _now._"

They both sniff the air, 'purchases' forgotten.

"He's right," Julia says. "Fresh, too." Trevor replies. "Best get to it, then."

"w-What?"

They both look down at him with sharp eyes.

"Whatever came for 'em, it's still around here somewhere."

"Smells like rain and lightning," Julia adds thoughtfully.

"You do what you do best. Have a nibble and tell us what it is, and how to kill it."

Jon's knees feel like jelly. "I can't."

A flash of light at the corner of his vision. Reflected off a wickedly sharp hunting knife in Julia's hand.

"You will. Or should we see what all you can grow back?"

"Please," he says, finally. "You know what it does. Please don't..."

He doesn't know whether to say _make me_ or _let me_.

Two months ago, Nico Ramirez watched their friend get on an escalator that went up forever. Now, they're weeping into their hands. Jon feels as sick as he is sated. They're only seventeen, and now they'll be seeing him in their nightmares for the rest of their life.

Or, Jon supposes, trying not to vomit out the car window, the rest of _his_.

"If you're sick in this bloody car," Trevor warns, and Jon shakes his head mutely. "I'm watching you."

"Watch the road," Julia says, and then they're back into that gentle teasing and he's all alone in the back.

Alone.

God, it's been two days and he's just now thought of Martin. He really is a selfish bastard, isn't he?

He fishes his phone out of his new jacket.

_I'll be away for awhile. I'm coming back. I promise. don't let peter tell you otherwise. _

_be safe_

No reply. He just has to have faith that Martin got it.

These days, Martin's all he can manage to have faith in.


	2. Message in a Bottle I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a castaway, island lost at sea  
Another lonely day, no one here but me

It's been a week and a half and Jon hasn't stopped texting.

_America feels different this time? i suppose i'm different this time. it's lovely here this time of the year._

Here, there is a shaky photo of admittedly beautiful autumn leaves. All Martin can think is that with Jon away, he's truly alone. He hasn't a single friend on these miserable isles. 

_Trevor has a penchant for classic rock, with surprisingly agreeable tastes. Even so, my requests, and in fact my attempts to make requests, have so far been snubbed. Maybe Black Sabbath will go over well? I’m not giving up. No matter what Julia says, if she were really willing to savage someone over control of the radio, I would be looking at the liberated bottom half of Trevor Herbert right now._

_i miss you terribly, Martin. I know you have your own task and I trust you implicitly. I just wish I could see you. _

_ Be safe _

This isn’t fair. Jon knows what he’s trying to do, as much as anyone else does. It’s lonely in and of itself, his plan. He supposes that’s appropriate. 

"Still hearing from your Archivist?" Peter asks. Miserable prick. He knows full well, as he's invariably leaned over Martin's shoulder to read Jon's messages every time Martin takes the time to read them. Smelling of fog and sea, and occasionally Elias' expensive cologne, which Martin can't _believe_ they still let him have in prison. 

"He's not _mine._"

"He certainly seems to think he is."

One of these days, Martin swears he's going to piss in Peter's coffee.


	3. Message in a Bottle II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I hope that someone gets my  
I hope that someone gets my

Jon’s texts continue to read like letters out of some gothic romance_._

_I sleep very little lately, but the rain and the drive have been nice. I’ve found a sort of comfortable drowsing state, sitting back here with the music turned just low enough. Trevor thinks I haven’t noticed he puts Riders on The Storm on when he wants me to rest. They’re taking strangely good care of me.   
_

_I took another statement today. I hardly even resisted. At least it keeps me useful. And the longer I’m useful, the more chances I’ll have to get home. Get back. I meant get back. _

_Splendid news! We found some old cassettes. We've been listening to the Smiths for hours now. It's so nice, Martin. To know the recorder can do normal tape recorder things. To make us actually happy for a little while._

_What do you listen to? Do you even care about music? I never asked. It seemed...frivolous, I suppose. I know so little of your actual life that I cling to whatever scraps I manage to remember or Know. I'm trying not to Know, though. I want to hear it from you._

  
  
_There were horses today. It made me wonder if you liked horses. It sounds daft but really the first thing I think of when I see something new is what you’d think of it._

_I miss you. Be safe._

After which there is a photo of several horses in a large field. Martin’s heart aches, like moving a muscle held taut for too long. He shouldn’t let himself have this.

He can’t bring himself to delete them. They hurt like hot irons but they’re in such a precious, earnest voice. Like they’re something Jon trusts him to keep safe.

"You're only hurting yourself,” Peter says about them, strangely sincere. "More than that, you’re helping him hurt you. He knows what he's doing disrupts what we are and he does it anyway. Surely you don't need that."

Martin decides not to ask if they're still talking about Jon. Peter's eyes are red-rimmed and even from across the desk, Martin can smell Elias' cologne.


	4. When the Levee Breaks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s gonna break

The first time he hears the song they’re in a launderette and he’s hurriedly washing his binder in the sink. 

He’d been afraid to mention it, but it's really started to smell and he hasn’t been able to hand wash it in the string of public bathrooms and launderettes. Too many people, he’d explained, haltingly, under their piercing scrutiny. What if they see and know what it is, and know what _he_ is?

They arrive near midnight. Julia flips the sign to closed, locks the doors, and Trevor starts loading their clothes into a washing machine by the sink.

”We’ll make sure no one comes in,” he says, “You just take care of your business so we can be on our way.”

He’d honestly been afraid they’d react poorly; they may have been understanding last time, but they’d all been on much different terms. He’s known plenty of people whose respect for his gender was inextricable from their respect for him. Or lack thereof, as it usually turned out. A string of disastrous attempts at romance who told their friends what a bitch their date turned out to be. Study partners and group project acquaintances who whispered about what _her_ problem was. Stealth is key to his comfort: he's fundamentally unlikeable, therefore the less people can use against him the better.

So the last few weeks he’s been braced for a comment or insult or outright condemnation. A casual _she_ that burns worse than a wax hand. A question about surgery or his 'real' name or _something._

He realizes, staring down at the brown fabric that no longer quite matches his hands, feeling the Hunters standing guard over his privacy, that he’s safe. That he will always be safe with them, at least in this way.

They don’t like him, or trust him, but after everything they still _respect_ him.

The rush of gratitude almost takes his legs from under him and when he looks at them there's a soft humming in his ears, a rushing in time with his heart. He tells himself it's just the ugly fluorescent lights or the downpour outside. He doesn't know what else it could be.

The rain doesn't stop, and neither does the hum.

Pounding on the car windows and his hair and his jacket. Thrumming in his ears as he pulls information (not statements, no more statements even though he's hungry hungry _hungry_) from hikers and climbers, victims and witnesses. Thrumming as he builds a portrait of a young man who smells of rain and ozone and makes every foothold seem helplessly distant, makes even the colorful artificial walls suddenly deadly smooth, instills the deep terror of slack rope. Swelling when Trevor pats his shoulder approvingly, and when they arrive in a new town just _hours_ behind him.

It's worst at night. Watching Trevor and Julia bed down, folded into each other so close and so easy. Not spooning, exactly, more sort of flopped over each other like...well, like wolves, Jon supposes. That _song_ rushes in his ears so loud he can barely think.

Something in him _yearns._ His guts twist up, seeing them so effortlessly intimate. It feels like jealousy without teeth, without malice, like staring into the window of someone else's home, like smelling someone's perfume lingering in an empty office. Feels like seeing photos from coworkers' Friday night drinks, knowing he'd never be invited because there's simply no space for him. Knowing there's no reason for the gnawing hole in his stomach because they don't even _like_ him.

He looks at the hunters, at the cozy little world he's intruding in, and listens to the pulsing in his ears, slow and deep and melancholy. Listens to it with them sitting in a booth across from him at a diner, the table an ocean between them. Listens to it sitting in the backseat while they sing along to the radio or Julia’s phone or nothing at all, stringing shared lyrics between them. Jon knows all the words to all the songs so far, mundanely and with the comfort of years, but he doesn’t join. This isn’t for him. There’s no place for him in their inside jokes and their cozy physicality. 

He wanted so badly to be friends, that first time. Stupid. Childish.

Impossible. 

He doesn't belong here.

He mostly texts Martin at night for this reason. To distract himself from how badly he wants to go back to the archives. There's a space for him there, however cramped and impersonal. He texts Martin whatever soft, inane anecdotes he can think of and aches so deep he feels sick. Aches because he doesn't belong there, either, not really, comfort being the antithesis of what he's become.

He texts at night because he can't stand their teasing, _texting your boy?_ and _your young man call yet, lad? _

_He's not mine,_ he insists, however badly he wants to just pretend.

(He knows what he _actually_ wants, for once. He knows the song swells in his ears when he thinks of Martin's face).

Martin isn't his, and he's not Martin's. He doesn't get to be someone's anymore. He doesn't belong to Martin, or the Archives. He doesn't belong _anywhere_.

He wants so badly to go home, but he has no home to go to. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> weird note but if you're UK based and you call laundromats something different please lemme know it's killing me  
Edit: thanks so much to gingerspark and mx_carter for helping me out with that. I'm the type to agonize over that shit


End file.
